A comparative study of discourse and ideological representations of protesters in international online news during 2014 Occupy Central

Abstract

The sense of governance in society can be revealed by the embedded ideologies in news reports on political events. The present study investigates the case of 2014 Occupy Central (OC) in Hong Kong and analyses how three international news outlets in different political backgrounds constructed different profiles of OC protesters, the less powerful group in governance. Guided by the assumption that choices of certain linguistic forms indicate authorial ideologies and social power relations, we examined two dimensions in the media discourse: lexical framing of protesters and transitivity. The findings indicate that the image of protester was generally polarised between Outgroup and Ingroup members in different sources. The biggest ideological clash is found between the Chinese and American broadsheets. The China Daily held a much more critical view towards the protesters, labeling them as organised anti-government minority and regarding student protesters as ignorant campaigners. Such sketch serves to promulgate Chinese government’s stances towards governance, the centralisation of power control and the public’s obedience to the government. By contrast, protesters in the mouth of The Washington Post and The New York Times constitute the majority of Hong Kong people fighting for the deserved political power. Governance in this sense should involve a great agency from civilians.